Icarus
her shape— is buoyant
against:
∗NIGHTTIME CITY-GLITZ∗
building-lights bud the ramifying skyline
(her shoulder? pearling
in the half light)
Sure, days pass,
debris falls
we clean / we say: Good Morning!
Her eyes collect like stillicide,
perpetual, upon her face.
How do we do this?
(((silence)))
What am I if not a broken boy?
Terminal Theater
Oh God! An evening martini
is the backdrop
to so much displeasure.
I have wanted to say this
for so long… Tonight I say it. Simply,
I want to be filled. Memory spills
like motor oil on the driveway.
An antelope walks across
the bright green field
of my mind. Simply, When I say
I love you, I mean it.
Georgia slurps you up. Here,
buildings glimmer like horns
upon a wild beast. Buck up,
I tell myself, buck-up-god-dammit.
The brackish sky fills with flight.
I could feel it,
I could feel it in the pit of me,
that you were loving her
the way you had once loved me.
I try writing
pine trees in winter!
snow on the city streets….
Nothing works. Nothing
can be beautiful tonight.
The thick dream lost.
I have felt that slow gallop
of desire raise and then fall
within me. All the fucking
then all the leaving. I’m in the gutter.
The city scoffs at me! I burst at the seams.
S. Yarberry is a trans poet and writer. Their poetry has recently appeared in pulpmouth, Redivider, Burnside Review, among others. Their other writings can be found in Bomb Magazine, The Adroit Journal, and Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. S. is a PhD candidate in English literature at Northwestern University and they serve as the Poetry Editor of The Spectacle.